08/26/2013

Since he also had to keep up at his day job of painting The Last Supper, Da Vinci downed gallons of coffee to stay awake during his all-night chicken soup experiments (this is all explained in the highly entertaining and absolutely worth every penny of the cover price book, The Da Vinci Cold).

Trying to reproduce his Jewish doctor's recipe was taking more time than he had, leading Leonardo to drastic measures. He concocted a potent enough coffee drink to keep him going day and night without the bother of sleep. This sketch of a lablel for a bottled version of his formula displays his faith in the product's effectiveness.

Legend has it that he gifted a barrel of his Leo's Last Sippa Espresso to a monastery and, when consumed with their morning meal, it caused every last one of the monks to break their vow of silence, yelping, "Yowza! Now that's some coffee!"

08/23/2013

Prompted by revelations in The Da Vinci Cold that Leonardo spent so much of his time and energy in the kitchen has historians rethinking the true purpose of some his inventions. Previously thought to be his design for a helicopterlike flying machine, this fabric-covered spiral device may in fact have been a smaller-scale multi-tasker cooking utensil; a bottle-stopper or something that could be lowered into a cannister or cookpot as a rotating coffee filter or for rendering schmaltz.

08/21/2013

Leonardo Inspired by Chicken Wings?

Through all of his years of testing recipes for the perfect chicken soup (as detailed in my new book The Da Vinci Cold), Leonardo was puzzled by barnyard birds' inability to fly. His conclusion — that despite having wings chickens are just too stupid figure out how to get airborne — may have inspired his design for a proto hang-gliding contraption (pictured above) that would allow humans — whom he optimistically presumed to be smarter than poultry — to go where no chicken had gone before.

08/19/2013

Long thought to be the sketch for some sort of threading device for weaving, in light of recent revelations about Da Vinci's culinary experiments, this drawing is now believed to be Leonardo's design for a six bird at a time-rotisserie, allowing him to slow-roast up to half-a-dozen plucked and seasoned chickens at one time, all while rotating them occasionally to ensure even cooking but at a safe distance from the flames (see the lever at right). Although the rods may seem too close together to accommodate six birds, remember that Renaissance chickens were much smaller than modern poultry, closer to the size of a cornish game hen.